Bitchin’ Space Pirates 25 – NINJA PIRATES

It’s not a party without Strider, yo. Also, bonus points for the vampirate who shows up during the montage at the end. He might have appeared earlier in the episode, but I wasn’t paying close enough attention . . .

Speaking of being confused, all my blather about the Kanedroid last week was a result of being confused about just what the hell went on last week with all the robots and sneaking around and whatnot. This episode shows what a dope I am for speaking out of confusion and making assumptions.

Obviously we have only the vaguest of hints that the other Kane we see aboard the Bettenmaru and peeping down at folks later on in the episode is Kane’s younger twin brother. However, that is clearly a likelier scenario than the convoluted nonsense I conjured with the Kanedroid. This plot point is still a bit convoluted, though . . . some weird strings have to be pulled to get Kane off the Bettenmaru and reporting to Ironbeard, while younger twin has to scramble onboard the ship and pretend as if he actually knows everyone. (Maybe he does. At least Misa seemed familiar with the guy when they called out double Kane on this silliness.) But, hey, yet again our show about a teenage pirate who commands the respect of adult pirates has pulled silly plot stuff, so whatevs.

I like Luca’s tan. I also like the hilariously flippant way the show deals with her disappearance. Hey, who needs to let the workplace know you’re going on vacation elsewhere? Let ’em deal with that shit themselves. That said, it does seem like a thing Luca would do. And her story does connect back with the main story in an OK way as we see in the short flashback showing Ririka blasting those fools from the space race a few episodes back. At least some people know what’s going on and aren’t totally in the dark.

Then there’s Ironbeard, whose motivations are still slightly murky. Clearly he wants to see pirates be Pirates and not fucking sideshows who rob space cruise ships so that the 1 percent can jerk themselves off as they blabber to everyone they know that they met Real Pirates and survived to tell the tale. (Slightly ironic since Ironbeard dresses like a god damn sideshow himself.) But he’s also on semi-friendly (?) terms with Blue Rose Quartz Christie, or at least friendly enough that she’ll willingly be escorted by Ironbeard to wherever he wishes to take her. Maybe she has some relation to the queen, perhaps a rebellious daughter or niece or whatever, which might explain where she gets all this ridiculous tech. Or maybe she’s just some person who got lucky enough to participate in this Pirate Hunting experiment, I dunno.

Also, I guess Ironbeard’s job from the Queen is vague enough to allow Quartz Christie to fight Marika in a laser light show space pirate battle before hauling her in. Better get that stuff out of the way and not let silly stuff like “following orders” impede pirate battles. Note that I am not objecting to this. I like laser light shows. I also like spotlights shining on Marika and Quartz for no reason at all. It’s kind of like in pro wrestling when “Stone Cold” Steve Austin comes to the ring out of nowhere to beat up Vince McMahon, but the guy in the back running the technical side of the show is always ready to have Austin’s music going within a split second of his appearing onscreen. It’s almost as if it’s planned, or something!

How many parfaits did Marika have to stuff into Chiaki to get her to agree to this? And why did they record a song at roughly the quality of a World War II-era radio show? Pirate propaganda!

5 Responses to “Bitchin’ Space Pirates 25 – NINJA PIRATES”

Popular speculation from the fans (both on 2ch and the english speaking world) suggests that Ironbeard might actually be Marika’s otoo-san.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough. This particular last arc was interesting considering it’s the only arc that deviated from the original Mouretsu Pirates (MoPai) light novels. I wonder why Sato only decided to use volumes 1-3?

There’s definitely more than enough material for a second season since the novel has reached volume 8. Director Sato is also looking forward to seeing if he’s allocated a second season according to his twitter. He just needs a greenlight.

Oh yeah, I mentioned that in my previous post, and some other folks I follow brought it up before me. Seems like the obvious thing to think.

My guess is Sato deviated from the novels because he wasn’t sure if he would be able to animate the whole thing? That’s purely a guess, though, since I don’t know enough about the novels to know if one of them would provide a suitable finale.

About 3/4 of the series is from the novels. The very beginning of this last arc is where it drifts off from the novel. I can’t remember which episode that was but basically anything after the Jenny/ Evil Uncle incident.